#v import

So over a year ago, I decided I identified as agender, but as a whole I feel really weird about the whole gender thing.

Growing up, I thought a lot that life would be easier if I were a boy, that maybe I should be a boy, because I didn’t feel like what it seemed a girl was supposed to be.  Until university-- where I just interact with SO MANY MORE girls than guys-- my friend group was always mostly male, and I just seemed to “get them” more than I did most girls.  So, tomboy, for sure.  When I was 10, I decided I wanted my hair cut short.  Real short.  It took me four years to get a hair stylist who would actually go with my wishes, but it happened, and short hair just feels so much more me.  I was mistaken for a boy a lot, because of my hair and the fact that I wore baggier clothes, longer shorts, neutral colors, and didn’t wear skirts or dresses until I was almost 17.  And I didn’t really mind, tbh.

But also around that time, for all the shit that I went through in high school, I started to be more comfortable with the idea of being female.  I never explicitly thought of myself as a “girl” (when things were divided by gender, it takes me a little bit to place myself, because it just doesn’t seem like an intrinsic part of who I am) but I began to realize that I didn’t have to be a boy to be who I am.  I just am me.  Some things that in part inspired this were Tamora Pierce’s The Song of the Lioness quartet and this series whose name I can never remember where the main character is magically bound to her dead twin brother’s skin and raised as a boy-- and has no idea that she was born a girl until she starts BLEEDING THROUGH THE SKIN when her period begins, and is initially really uncomfortable with her “birth” gender.

They pointed out to me that the definition of “girl” is WAY MORE VAGUE than society seems to say, so I was like “okay, maybe girl can describe me???”

And then, when I got a new tumblr (a couple of years ago?) I was introduced to the idea of agender, which REALLY RESONATED WITH ME.  It was like, hey, I can be just who I am, and fuck gender because what does it really mean anyway?? It has no bearing on how I act.  It has no bearing on how I dress, or how I cut my hair, or who I’m attracted to.  And I feel like me, no matter what gender I’m called.